Joanna's Singapore adventures

A common sight on the streets all around Singapore is these little icecream carts. They serve slabs of icecream between bits of wafer or bread. Icecream in wafer can cost as little as S$1 (AU$0.78, US$0.72), sometimes they cost a little more. These carts also sometimes sell cold drinks. It is really nice being able to get cheap icecream on a hot day but i haven't yet managed to learn the art of eating it before it ends up melted all over me!

It is one of those commonly held bits of wisdom that McDonald’s restaurants and McDonald’s food are exactly the same regardless of where in the world you are. That’s not entirely true. There’s a few quite noticeable differences between McDonald’s in Australia and in Singapore.

The food does taste a bit different. I think one of the reasons is that here in Singapore it is halal which means it contains no pig products and is therefore suitable for Muslims to eat. The food is also different because McDonald’s in Singapore seems to have made little effort to make their food healthier. I think some of the items are even greasier than in other countries. There is also a few items you don't find in other countries like a spicy chicken burger and cups of corn. They certainly seem to like the food over here- Singapore has one of the highest per-capita rates of McDonald's burger consumption of anywhere in the world.

Another big difference is the kind of people you see in McDonald’s. Here many of the front counter staff are older. They are sometimes known as McAunties and McUncles. There’s also very often students using McDonald’s as a place to study. I even saw some study in the McDonald’s at Changi airport at 4 in the morning! McDonald’s is a popular place to study because many students don’t have much space to study at home and McDonald’s is air-conditioned. I don’t think most Australian students would dare be seen studying in public!

View from the central courtyard


The common room for my building. These rooms are airconditioned unlike most of the hall so they are a nice place to relax.


This is one of the more popular food places in the residence. It stays open to 2 am every night. Even after midnight it is often still quite crowded.

Singapore's most famous hotel is the Raffles Hotel and one of the things they are most well known for is the Singapore Sling cocktail. Some friends visiting Singapore were keen to try one so we all headed off to Raffles together.

The Singapore Sling is served at the long bar. It's quite a nice place. When we were there, a very good jazz band was playing. The weird thing about the place is that it is perfectly acceptable to throw peanut shells on the floor!

The drink was a bit of a letdown. It tasted like cough syrup. I think i've actually had better tasting cough syrup. I only managed to drink a few centremetres of mine. The rest went to my friends.

I'm sure I've also had cheaper cough syrup. We had assumed that the price mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide was correct. Not the case. Apparently there had been a price rise. We had also forgotten to consider that tax would not be included in that price (it is included for most things) or that they would add a service charge. In the end it cost S$27 a drink! (AU$21, US$19). My friends were so shocked at the bill that they asked for copies of the receipt to keep as souvenirs.

Learning here isn't all heads in books (although there is a lot of that!). The sociology of food unit i'm taking also has some practical components. One of those involved cooking because a lot of students lack cooking experience which is helpful in understanding some of the unit content. Due to the availability of cheap food court food and the commonness of having a maid who does the cooking, many people here do not cook much. The task we were set was to as a group of 5 to shop for and cook a meal for ourselves for under S$30 (AU$25). We did the cooking at a group members house.

The finished masterpiece. Given none of us had much cooking experience and we didn't use a recipe, it tasted pretty good.